Curt Bois

It is true that this column tends to skew American, or at the very least English-speaking. Yes, I should fix this; yes, I will take suggestions. But it is kind of inevitable. I might speak enough Spanish to understand fairly simple movies in it, but that’s a big “might,” because my vocabulary is limited. I definitely don’t speak enough Irish, and there aren’t a lot of movies in Irish anyway. I do watch a lot of subtitled movies, but most of the media I consume is, by definition, in English. And that means that, yes, the only reason I know of the career of the fascinating Curt Bois is the dozen or so years he spent in the US as a refugee.

Wikipedia wants a citation for the information that he’s one of film’s first child stars, but it’s basic math. His first movie was in 1907; he was six years old. There’s simply not a lot of room for previous child stars. Oh, you can argue “star,” and certainly I’m not equipped to do so. But the fact remains that between “Bauernhaus und Grafenschloß” and “Das letzte Band” is a career lasting over eight decades, and that’s impressive even if he both started and ended with shorts. Shorts aren’t any less of a career, and even if they were, he certainly did his share of features in the intervening years.

Including, yes, Casablanca, because we are continuing with our theme. Bois played the pickpocket who informed the English couple that there were vultures everywhere and they should beware pickpockets while picking the man’s pocket. It’s a minor performance, more entertaining than anything. Still, it’s one of those things that paints a picture of the city of Casablanca and the dangers therein, what people were risking in their escapes. Even the wealthier couple who can just go safely back to England are in danger of one kind or another, in part because they’re not aware enough to be careful.

Unlike many other refugees, Bois went home. He had been in My Gal Sal and Cover Girl and the Laughton Hunchback of Notre Dame, and in 1950, he returned to Berlin, where he was born. Reading between the lines, he initially ended up in East Berlin before managing to make his way to West Berlin. And he kept acting. Over his lifetime, both in Germany and the US, Bois had well over a hundred screen credits, and he also appeared on the stage. He even wrote and directed Ein Poleterabend, and I don’t know enough German to know what that means.

In one of his final performances, he was in Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire as the poet Homer, who wandered the city trying to capture Berlin in verse. It’s a beautiful conclusion to a lengthy career, even if it didn’t quite conclude it. Bois had survived where many others didn’t, and he came back to Berlin even though he likely could’ve kept working in Hollywood. Berlin clearly mattered to him. He must have loved it even though a government based there wanted him dead.